We’re on the hunt for the Headless Horseman in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery to see the real places mentioned in Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

From Shakespeare and Dickens to presidents ranging from Madison to Theodore Roosevelt and Jimmy Carter, it’s been quite a summer of Nerd Trips. Here’s a sneak peak of where we’ve been.

I had never heard of Paul Jennings until we encountered him on a Nerd Trip to Montpelier, home to our fourth president James Madison. Jennings was a slave who served as Madison’s personal assistant during the White House years and afterward. Jennings is a fascinating witness to history, writing the first White House memoir, called “A Colored Man’s Reminiscence of James Madison,” published in 1865. I bought a copy at the Montpelier gift shop.

“Behold The Man,” that’s the phrase on this American folk art watercolor I discovered today at the Maryland Antiques Show. The painting shows George Washington with his arm extended in the style of the famous Gilbert Stuart painting.

Happy Birthday to George Washington. The “Father of Our Country” was born February 22, 1732.

There are lots of places with connections to George Washington, so you know we’ve encountered him on a Nerd Trip or two!

“Mt. Vernon is not nerdy!” insisted my friend Susan B. when she first heard about the concept of Nerd Trips. Apparently, not everyone is comfortable with the idea that somewhere they’ve visited has been labeled as nerdy. Susan grew up in Washington, D.C. and visited Mt. Vernon nearly every year, often on a school field trip.
Her declaration was the first salvo in what I call “the Great Nerd Debate.” What exactly makes something nerdy?